Create Your Way at Your Level and Beyond with Arduino Uno, Nano, and Mega

If you are getting involved in the Maker movement, you’ll want to check out Arduino products. Arduino are development boards incorporating a microprocessor along with analog and digital IO. They are small form-factor development boards driving electronics hardware with simple open-source language toolchains. The boards are inexpensive and come with accessories to build up design ideas. So, dig into your piggy bank and join the Maker movement!

Makers use Arduino products to incubate ideas using computers and hardware to breadboard concepts. An open source language framework uses Processing integrated development environment (IDE) along with Wiring to write code that makes hardware work. This means easy-to-use coding language. You can use Wiring to communicate and implement your design to include motors, lights, sensors, and more to create everything from art installations to biologically-inspired fabrics.

Arduino was developed for industrial design students when teachers wanted access to electronic hardware to implement ideas without the need for an engineering degree. It is now widely used by makers, artists, and researchers to build ideas into breadboarded concepts. Often, these concepts are shown at Maker Faires or are built within startups to create devices for the market. Hobbyists use Arduinos to make wearable art for festivals or create yard displays for the holidays. They are used by neurobiologists, instrumentation specialists, and by roboticists. Some use Arduino to build gadgets for communication with the Internet.

The inventors of Arduino wanted you to make extraordinary things.

Arduino was Invented For Electronic Creators and Artists

Arduino was part of a project to create a low-cost, open-source platform for students in Italy at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. It was developed to get computing tools into students’ hands without costing too much. The project also sought microcontrollers with open-source communication toolsets able to easily interface with personal computers.

Making fun stuff with Arduino

Personal computers were common tools accessible to students and there was a need to use the resource without needing a computer engineering degree. The developers sought to remove complications by developing an easy-to-understand communication language for use with a microcontroller. But first, they had to find a microcontroller with open-source interfaces, commonly known as boot loaders, compilers, linkers, and uploaders. Experiments led to an Atmel microcontroller for its open-source platform.

Atmel’s open-source toolchain was used to build a development board around the part. Today, there are many Arduino development boards with varying features for use in projects by the community. All Arduino products are available on our website, and we encourage Makers to access community boards to discuss Arduino projects that help fuel your ideas. A few of the common development boards offered are the Arduino Uno, Nano, or Mega. Let’s take a look.

Arduino Development Boards Fuel Your Idea

Arduino development boards are built around an Atmel microprocessor. As such, they incorporate access to power, communication, and analog or digital conversions. The boards include connection pins or sockets allowing the addition of circuits controlled by the board. Many of the connectors plug straight into breadboards facilitating the creation of manually built circuits for idea development.

Let’s take a look at several boards offered by Arduino for idea development.

Arduino Uno

This development board is built around the ATmega328P microcontroller with operating voltage of 5V, easily sourced from a USB connection or, if you’d like, from a bench supply via its power input connector. The CPU processes at 16 MHz booting from 2kB of SRAM. It’s connections support up to 6 analog inputs, 14 digital IOs, or 8 digital IOs and 6 PWMs.

The UNO is the best board to get started with electronics and coding. If this is your first experience tinkering with the platform, the UNO is the most robust board you can start playing with. The UNO is the most used and documented board of the whole Arduino family.

Arduino Uno development board

The Uno connects to your computer using USB. This connection, together with the Processor IDE user interface, allows you to talk to the microprocessor. These tools, the IDE and the USB connector, allow you to make and test your designs with ease.

Arduino Nano

This development board is built around the ATmega 168 processor, although some Nano versions use the ATmega 328P processor. Both operate on 5V input power and accept up to 8 analog inputs and 14 digital IOs, with the ability to use 6 as PWMs. The original Nano sported 1 kB of SRAM and 16 kB of Flash. Later versions were upgraded.

The Arduino Nano is a small, complete, and breadboard-friendly board based on the ATmega328P (Arduino Nano 3.x). It has more or less the same functionality of the Arduino Duemilanove, but in a different package. It lacks only a DC power jack and works with a Mini-B USB cable instead of a standard one.

Arduino Nano development board

This board has much of the same functionality as the Uno board although it is smaller form factor. To keep the profile small, it uses micro-USB USB serial port for connection to your computer and for power.

Arduino Mega

This development board is bigger to handle more design functionality. Using the ATmega 2560 microcontroller, this board boasts 16 analog inputs and 54 digital IO. Of that 54 digital IO, 15 may be used for PWM operations. It sports bigger Flash, SRAM, and EEPROM to drive your more ambitious designs and uses USB along with an additional 4 UART ports.

The MEGA 2560 is designed for more complex projects. With 54 digital I/O pins, 16 analog inputs and a larger space for your sketch it is the recommended board for 3D printers and robotics projects. This gives your projects plenty of room and opportunities.

Arduino MEGA development board

The MEGA incorporates more connection ports along with Ethernet connection! It includes both a power jack and a regular USB port for operating power.

Arduino offers products geared toward Makers, starting from entry level and moving into advanced. Octopart supports Makers and offers all Arduino products on our website. Or, you may find us at one of your local Maker Faires where we are ready to help in sourcing your hardware! Wherever you are in your maker journey, our site has the parts you’ll need, at competitive prices, to explore ideas and source parts to use along with your Arduino board.

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